Q4 biography

Riccardo Giacconi was born in Genoa, Italy in 1931. He lived in Milano until the age of 24. His parents separated when he was eight years old. During the bombings of Milano during WWII, he was sent to live with his two aunts, where he discovered a love for reading. His schooling was erratic, and he was a troublemaker in his elementary days, but he eventually went directly from high school to the University of Milan and got a Phd in physics in only four years. He loved research, not lectures, and his thesis was about proton reactions in a cloud chamber. He then moved to America in 1956 to study with R.W. Thompson. After two years, he left Thompson and went to Princeton University to study mesons. After his fellowship ended, he went to American Science and Engineering to work as part of a 28 man team. At AS&E he worked on x-ray astronomy. In 1973 he decided that he loved astronomy. He became the first director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and made plans to open Hubble to amateur astronomers. He is still alive today.

APOD 4.5

This is a long exposure picture taken by a swinging camera. The swirl on the left is the alpha star in the constellation Leo, Regulus. The right one is the planet Mars. the reason Regulus' path varies in color and intensity is because atmospheric turbulence causes starlight to scintillate. This is commonly known as stars' twinkling. in the lower corners of the image, you can see the paths of two faint stars as well.

APOD 4.4

 

This picture is of an emission nebula in the constellation Auriga. The nebula is called IC 140. The nebula is 12,000 light years away. The two little squiggles in the upper left are called the Tadpoles, and the nebula is affectionately referred to as a pond.

Observation, Q4

I went outside the other night, as usual, but this particular time, I brought my star charts. I noticed that the star I actually thought was Spica wasn't Spica. It was actually Saturn. I was amazed. Now I can perfectly identify Virgo, Spica, and Saturn.

APOD 4.3

This picture is what the night sky would look like if we could see the radio waves being emitted by a black hole in the Centaurus A galaxy. The waves are invisible to the human eye, but their distribution covers a huge area of the sky. The galaxy is located in the constellation Centaurus. The dots in the background represent not stars, but rather x-ray emitting galaxies.

Zooniverse

I have been spending 2 hours a week recording the weather charts from old ships. I have also dabbled in the star classification project, but mostly I just do the weather one.

APOD 4.2

This is an image of Earth taken from the International Space Station in 2003. This is what Earth might have looked like to Yuri Gagarin, who was the first person in space almost exactly fifty years ago. On April 12, 1961 he was launched. He was a soviet hero, but unfortunately, he died in a plane crash only seven years later. The first Us launched space shuttle also launched on an April12. it launched in 1981, twenty years after Gagarin, and thirty years ago.